The Loss We Carry Through Life

Reflections on pregnancy loss, living with grief and never forgetting.

This article is a little different from the ones I've shared previously. Until now, I've mainly written about neonatal care, sharing information and experiences from my work as a neonatal nurse.

Today, however, I want to share something more personal. Something I've experienced not as a nurse, but as a mother.

Having experienced two miscarriages, I've come to understand that pregnancy loss is something you carry with you, even as life continues around you.

As we mark Baby Loss Awareness Week, I wanted to share some of my own thoughts and experiences, and reflect on how pregnancy loss becomes part of our story, something we carry with us throughout our lives.

Life doesn't stop after loss

One of the things I've realised is that life carries on, whether you're ready for it or not.

There are still responsibilities, routines, conversations and ordinary things that need doing. Eventually, you find yourself laughing again, making plans, enjoying time with your family and having days when you feel genuinely happy.

And from the outside, it might look like everything has returned to normal. But something has changed.

Just because someone is smiling, going to work or getting on with their day doesn't mean they've forgotten what happened.

I think sometimes people assume that because you're doing well, you've moved on. And perhaps in some ways you have. However, I'm learning that continuing to live your life and forgetting what you've lost are two very different things.

A pregnancy that ended was still a pregnancy

I think this is something that can be difficult for people who haven't experienced pregnancy loss to fully understand.

When a pregnancy ends, you're not only grieving what happened. You may also be grieving everything you had already started imagining. The moment you saw that positive pregnancy test. The thoughts about who that little person might become. The changes you pictured for your family. The future you had begun to see differently.

It doesn't matter how early the pregnancy ended. The hopes and feelings attached to it were real.

And while every person's experience is different, I believe it's important that we acknowledge that a pregnancy doesn't have to reach a certain number of weeks for its loss to matter. Regardless of how early that pregnancy ended, it was still a life that someone had hoped for, loved and imagined a future with and it deserves to be aknowledged.

Having other children doesn't take away the loss

I'm incredibly grateful to be a mother. My daughter brings so much happiness into my life, and there have been countless moments when she's made me smile during some of my most difficult days.

But being a mother to a living child doesn't make the babies I've lost any less important and I'm learning that I can be grateful for what I have and still grieve what I've lost.

I think this is something worth remembering when supporting parents after pregnancy loss. Having children already, or going on to have more children in the future, doesn't replace the pregnancy that ended.

Every pregnancy is part of someone's story, and one doesn't erase another.

What support can look like

I don't think there's a perfect thing to say to someone who has experienced pregnancy loss.

Sometimes people don't know what to say, and I understand that. Pregnancy loss can be an uncomfortable subject, particularly when someone is worried about saying the wrong thing.

But, personally, I think what matters most is acknowledging that it happened.

You don't need to have the right words or know exactly how someone is feeling. You don't need to bring it up in every conversation, either.

Sometimes it's simply about remembering that the person in front of you has experienced something significant, even if they seem perfectly fine that day.

And understanding that grief doesn't follow a timetable.

Someone might want to talk about their loss one day and not the next. They might feel comfortable sharing their experience publicly but struggle to discuss it privately. They might appear happy while still carrying feelings that others cannot see.

There isn't one correct way to grieve, and support should leave room for those differences.

Learning to live with loss

I don't want my experiences of pregnancy loss to define everything about me.

I'm still a mother, a partner, a nurse and a person with plans, ambitions and things to look forward to.

I want to enjoy my life, make new memories and continue building the family I've always wanted.

But I also don't want to pretend that those pregnancies never happened.

They did happen. They mattered to me then, and they still matter now.

Sometimes I feel like people expect me to go back to being the happy Sofia I was before. And I will have good days and bad days, just like everyone else. I will laugh, enjoy life and make new memories. But that doesn't mean the old ones have disappeared.

The love I felt during my two pregnancies, for the two babies I'll never get to meet, is still here. It's present every day, even when I don't talk about it.

I carried two little lives inside me who, unfortunately, didn't make it. And although they're no longer physically here, they will always be part of me, part of who I am and the mother I've become.

I don't need to be sad every day to remember them. And I don't need to stop being happy for their lives to continue to matter.

I don't believe that continuing with life means leaving our grief behind. Sometimes it simply means learning to live with what has happened while continuing to experience everything else life has to offer.

And perhaps that's what I wish more people understood about pregnancy loss.

We can be happy. We can laugh. We can have more children and look forward to the future. And we can still remember the babies we lost.

Those feelings don't contradict each other.

They are all part of our story.